Trouble Brewing suggestions

A few suggestions for Trouble Brewing to improve it and to make it a bit more popular. I really like Trouble Brewing because of its team based aspect and it's an activity that allows you (and encourages you!) to do a variety of tasks. Unfortunately, it's currently not played much and could make use of a few changes that improve the game and give more reasons to play it.

My first suggestion is a change to the scoring system. All ingredients that can be put in the hoppers give 1 point. This encourages players to spend the first several minutes just filling buckets of water and taking them to the hopper, since that's the fastest way to get 100 points (which is the cap on points for collecting ingredients).

What I suggest is making it so that the ingredients scrapey bark, sweetgrubs and bowls of coloured water yield 2 points, and Bitternuts (which takes the longest to get) 3 points. Buckets of water stay 1 point but will only give a maximum of 28 points (1 full inventory of buckets of water). More points from other ingredients should make up for the point cap on buckets of water. On screen you will also be able to see what ingredients you have supplied so far, and how many points you have earned out of 100 from supplying ingredients.

Points earned from the total amount of rum collected per team should be increased from 2 to 5. Currently it's not very rewarding getting enough of each ingredient to make bottles of rum. Also with this point cap on collecting buckets of waters, I think this additional point increase for Rum is fair.

A rule of supplying at least 1 scrapey bark, 1 sweetgrubs, bowl of coloured water or 1 bitternut to gain Pieces of Eight PER rum will be applied (if it didn't some people would stay at base the entire game and still get PoE at the end of the game, now 5 instead of 2 per rum, for doing nothing). Also, you can still get above 100 PoE at the end of a game by making and collecting rum.Feel free to take a look at my suggestions:
200m xp prestige,

My second suggestion is a rework on rewards. Firstly I would like to see cooking BXP as something you can buy for PoE. Cooking is the skill you gain xp in when supplying ingredients and it's also related to the name Trouble Brewing (brewing being an activity that is part of the cooking skill). For some people cooking bxp may not seem very useful but it can always be of great use when Vic is around since there is no minigame that gives cooking bxp.

Another change is on clue scrolls. Currently you can buy a med level clue for a whopping 5k PoE (a high price that wasn't even adjusted after the update that reduced the prices of all the other TB rewards by 90%). I'm thinking of adding additional hard and elite clues as rewards with costs that are in line with the Thaler price of med, hard and elite clues. If we assume a typical players earns an average of 100 points per 20 minute game then the cost of a med clue is going to be 75 PoE (normally only available for 15 thaler which takes 15 mins to get on a spotlighted minigame), hard clues 225 PoE (normally 45 thaler) and elites will cost 1000 PoE (normally 200 thaler). The costs for clues could be made lower than this to make it more worth it getting clues via this new method.

Finally there will be a title which can be bought, [player name]

the Trouble Brewer

. A price that comes up in my head is 2500 PoE which is equal to what a set of full naval (hat, top and bottoms) used to cost originally.Feel free to take a look at my suggestions:
200m xp prestige,

To sum up my suggestions for TB:- buckets of water give a maximum of 28 points.- bottles of rum give 5 points instead of 2.- scrapey bark, sweetgrubs and bowls of coloured water give 2 points instead of 1, and bitternuts 3 points instead of 1.- you will be able to see what ingredients you supplied and how many points you earned so far on screen during a game.- cooking BXP can be bought.- more clue scrolls can be bought and the existing price of med clues will be changed.- you can unlock a title.

Hopefully this could be added (or some of these ideas) and make Trouble Brewing once again more alive.Feel free to take a look at my suggestions:
200m xp prestige,

Maybe one of the troubles is that the requirements for the quests needed to access it (Rum Deal and Cabin Fever) are too high. If they were lower (say, only needed to do Pirate's Treasure and maybe have a few skills at 25 or 30), then maybe it'd be a bit more accessable.

Of course these days it's hard to get big crowds for mini-games, hence the designated worlds for minigames and D&Ds on the World Select list.

Lowering the reqs is an idea, but if it's barely played now I don't think that alone would make it more alive. If more players have access to it and players have more incentive to play it after reworking TB then I can definitely see it being played more often.Feel free to take a look at my suggestions:
200m xp prestige,

I'd also suggest a tweak on the saboing/repairing system. At the moment, one saboteur burning the opposite team's equipment is not easily countered by 3-5 rebuilders - after the initial supplies are depleted you have to chop trees, make your piece in that clunky workshop interface and finally apply it to the machine, not to mention putting the fire out itself and even worse when the water pump is burning.

All this encourages trolling and destruction for lols and to be honest there's already too much of that in the game. It can also frustrate players into afk even more, feeling it's not worth trying to create something so easily destroyed.

I agree with the notion that Clues should be easier to obtain from TB, than from Thaler.

I might add a suggestion that flowers give half a point, if that's possible, as they require some gathering (even if the person who picked them isn't the one who deposits them).

Also it may be good to up the xp gained from performing actions while playing - xp/potential-progress-time wasting seems to be a big issue preventing people considering the idea of using Minigames.

It doesn't have to be the best xp in game, in those skills, it just needs to be comparable to time spent outside the game, so people don't feel it's wasted, and so that the rewards are an extra incentive to come together as a group, to play (even when equally rewarding, people will chose AFK>Solo>Group activities, and it can take quite a big incentive to change the tolerance point - regardless of whether someone finds something really fun to do).

The rewards for playing actively, also have to counteract the AFK-encouraging effects of Thaler, and the knock-on effects of AFKers that come from them (not as big an issue in TB, as in other Minigames, some of which can be entirely disrupted, or have play/enjoyment prevented, by a single AFKer).

Fortunately, it's these very things that allow rewards to be what may be seen as overpowered, simply because the perceived negatives counter-balance them.

With regards Sabo ~ I think it is an integral part of the game, and can be fun... however I do agree that it should be an option (or restricted to private/non-labled Worlds); alternatively, restricting the number of torches available would be a reasonable idea (especially as it's often the team with the fewest players, who end up bearing the brunt of attacks).

A bit of a side-topic, but: Do you know of any currently active (even if only very rarely) TB group, on RS3? (I know Theivopedia was running them for a while, after Poppy left, but he swapped to OSRS, a few Years back).

The reason I'm asking, is because I'm trying to set up some Weekly playing-only events, for some lesser played Minigames/ones where the playing communities have become isolated from new players by the Spotlight (each Minigame getting a different day of the Week).

It's intended, where possible, that the events are run by those enthusiastic and devoted to the Minigames in question, so that they can best inspire, and take care of, the newfolk.

The idea is to get regular times that people can know they will be able to go to the Minigames and actually play (both for relaxing, and for competition); I know that many of the Minigames were severely hit by the Spotlight, and even those that were slowly recovering from other things, have been throttled out of existence by it.

A large number of people liked these games, once, and out of those still playing, very few go to the Spotlights, and one of the main reasons is that they know they can't play, if they go (it will just be full of AFKers).

It will take a long time to become known, but once folks know they can play, and new folks are aware of it being an option to play, then it should run fairly well. What's more, it will encourage JAGEX to take more notice of the content, and realise it's still valued, and fun.

This might make them a little more receptive to implementing a few of the suggestions to help the Minigames (instead of valuing the suggestions of those that hate the content, over regular users of it, as they have done in the past).

If you know of any group, or would like to (and be able to) host such an event every week, at a set time, then please can you pass this on?

If you receive points by gathering flowers it would be inconsistent with the way points from ingredients are given, which is by actually adding ingredients to the hoppers. Though a gatherer still plays an important role in getting the number of finished rums up and thus gets points indirectly for his/her effort.

Well, the cooking bxp reward could be made high enough so that it's worth it doing TB for bxp and then do a conventional training method. But I don't think it's needed to increase the xp rates for all the actions inside the minigame so that it's comparable to outside the minigame. The rewards should be THE incentive to play it in my opinion.

Unless you add an activity bar that actually works properly, you can't truly stop people from AFKing. At least you can bring non-afkers to the game and encourage the afkers to actually play a minigame the way it was designed by having rewards that you can earn by playing ONLY. So there is Thalers for everyone and TB tokens (Pieces of Eight) with new rewards for non-afkers.

Not sure if there currently is an actual TB community but I do know that there was an FC called Tbrew where players sometimes meet up to start a game. I doubt this FC is still ever used since the FC's forum thread is gone.Feel free to take a look at my suggestions:
200m xp prestige,